Hospitalfield is pleased to present Florence Peake’s Your Meaning Not Your Materiality (YMNYM). YMNYM is an evolving and multifaceted long-term project that artist and choreographer Peake will be presenting across multiple venues in 2026 and 2027.

At Hospitalfield, YMNYM will open on 25 April and take the form of a series of sculptures installed across the gardens and historic house. On 16 August the sculptures in the garden will become the site for a dance performance; a collaboration between Florence Peake and The Scottish Dance Theatre.

YMNYM examines themes of loss and the human desire to grasp onto the intangible in the face of grief, asking the question what is left when physical material form is removed?

The sculptures presented across the site, whilst differing in scale and materiality are made by using the same technique, casting the spaces in-between bodies. On the lawn large scale casts form ‘shells’ that offer the possibility to be held in the space created by another body. Whilst around the garden walls slices of plaster casts created from the space between bodies adorn the walls. In the house brass and plaster casts bring these encounters down to the scale of the hand.

Through these works we are reminded of the intangible and temporal nature of the body, in this way YMNYM is a memorial to loss.

By using casting processes and materials such as plaster and metal, Peake is making the absent present and permanent, addressing the desire we have as humans to grasp and hold onto memory even in the face of inevitable change. Peake’s work, whilst starting from a place of personal loss, extends out into the universal human experiences of grief.

The performance in August will mark the culmination of a relationship with The Scottish Dance Theatre that started in 2024 during Peake’s studio residency at Hospitalfield. Peake spent a month in the studios working with the dancers through dance, drawing and sculpture. It is from this research that the series of sculptures on display for YMNYM were developed, the presentation of these works together represents the coalescence of this research for Peake.

YMNYM Is open to view Thursday to Sunday 10am – 4pm, from April 25th – October 4th.

Find out more.